During my recent vacation from the blogosphere, I came very close to forgetting the problems of the world - economic collapse, astrological terrorism, the coming global superpocalypse of 2012, and the rise of the soon-to-be-former former Soviet Union. Then this terrifying video came to my attention, and I had to return from my vacation a few days early.
Prepare to be shocked, because this video is shocking!
As any fool can plainly see, Soviet President Dmitri Medvedev is extolling the virtues of badminton whilst engaging in a heated match against his arch frenemy, Soviet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. While some international commentationists have dismissed this video cockery as part of the so-called bromance between sometime rivals Medvedev and Putin, but I see something rather sinister in this bit of KGB cock-play.
It is abundingly clear that Medvedev's display of shuttlecockery is nothing less than a set of marching orders to deep-underground spies and saboteurs across Russia and around the world, signaling the time when the Soviet Union will rise again and conquer the world - through badminton. And we in the United States, I fear, may not be up to the challenge.
This is of course, not to impugn the valiant efforts of our cockfighters on the front lines, brave men and women such as Howard Bach and Tony Gunawan and Eva Lee and Halim Haryanto Ho and Cee Ketpura. They will, I am sure, fight the oncoming Red Badminton Menace with the grace and skill we have come to expect from Team USA. But if my sources are correct and the Soviets are raising an entire army of Badmintonistas, I fear that our brave young men and women will be totally outnumbered.
That is, unless we close the Shuttlecock Gap. It is thus the patriotic duty of every American to set up a badminton net and get yourself some rackets and shuttlecocks and begin immediately training in the so-called "sport of cocks." If you don't improve your strokes, shots, and smash serves, you are a threat to national security.
A top-secret manifesto leaked to the Internet offers concrete, undisputable proof of the nationwide governmento-scientific cabal conspiring to force evolution education on the innocent schoolchildren of our nation. Created by the secretive and shadowy biologico-educational elites at the National Association of Biology Teachers, this so-called "memo" outlines the so-called "importance" of so-called "reaffirming" the so-called "teaching" of so-called "evolution" as part of the so-called "biology curriculum."
No doubt drafted in the secure and undisclosed catacombs of the NABT's elusive Allelo-Cave complex, the memo is quite clear in its support of well-studied and experimentally-demonstrated "explanations for the diversity of all life" such as common ancestry, natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift, leaving no room in the curriculospace for alternativistic views on the origin of life.
Evolutionary biology rests on the same scientific methodologies the rest of science uses, appealing only to natural events and processes to describe and explain phenomena in the natural world. Science teachers must reject calls to account for the diversity of life or describe the mechanisms of evolution by invoking non-naturalistic or supernatural notions, whether called “creation science,” “scientific creationism,” “intelligent design theory,” or similar designations. Ideas such as these are outside the scope of science and should not be presented as part of the science curriculum.
There you have it, folks. Concrete proof of the nationwide and therefore worldwide conspiracy to prevent the teaching of alternativistic and unproven hypotheses in science classrooms, in blatant violation of the principles of free speech and free expression we hold so dear.
True, the NABT may be standing on the side of the debate with all the evidence, but they're also standing on the side of not-freedom, which is a far more provocative buzzword. Which demonstrates exactly why we alternativists should not give up hope.
We will prevail in time, my friends. Because FREEDOM!
The sport of baseball has always had a too-close-for-comfort relationship with numbers, as far as I'm concerned. Any sport that can reduce a human player's performance and talent to a series of numbers such as batting average and slugging percentage and earned-run average is already too deep in the pocket of Big Digit for my tastes.
However, this was apparently not enough for the numbers. According to a recent investigative report, mathematics now seeks to control the outcome of the baseball's playoffs - the very thing that makes the mindless tedium of the 162-game season remotely bearable. It appears that The American League Championship Series between whatever teams are currently competing for the AL pennant - I'm guessing it's the Yankees and the Red Wings or something, I didn't bother to actually read the article - hinges entirely on simple mathematics.
This is something I have suspected for a long time, as a matter of fact. It seems more than just random chance that EVERY World Series winner in the past century has finished with exactly four wins. There must be something sinister going on - it can not be a mere coincidence. The numbers are obviously trying to use the national pastime to bring us down from the inside.
Well I, for one, won't let it happen. Until the once-great sport of baseball rids itself of its numeristic tendencies, I shall continue to not really care about it.
The obvious conclusion is that the arithmetelligencia is all out of ideas for indoctrinating the youth of today with their Answerist doctrine. Now I hate to toot my own horn most of the time, but in this instance I think most of the credit goes to me.
It is blindingly obvious that our message of academic freedom and the inherent fallibility of numbers is making a resonance in the young community. As leader of the worldwide Math Skeptic community, the credit for this must certainly belong to me. But also to you.
In a frank and tepid admission of impending defeat, Steven Newton of the National Center for Science Indoctrination recommends that the Geological Society of America (GSA) continue allowing alternative interpretations of geology into their prestigious geology conferences. Held annually in the ivory tower of the GSA's top-secret Fortress of Geolitude, these conferences allow the leading members of the geologico-evolutionalist conspiracy to set their rock and fossil agenda for the coming year.
In recent years, a number of legitimate geologists who don't adhere to the 4.57-billion year timeline of Earth's history (as pushed by conventional geologists and radioisotopes) have been giving presentations at these prestigious conferences. These so-called "Creationists" have been rubbing elbows - literally - with some of the top members of the old-Earth consensus-pushingigneousati and by thus gaining secondhand prestigiousness.
This, as you might expect, has the members of the Worldwide Geological and Evolutionistic Cabal up in arms - literally. Some argue that these so-called "Young Earth Creationists" should be thrown from the ivory tower - literally falling to their deaths on the schist and gabbro cliffs below. Others argue that this will literally make martyrs of the alternative geologists.
It appears that this is creating a rift that threatens to cleave the Geologists in two. Moreover, it throws all of geologicalist science into doubt. If the geologists cannot agree on what to do with infiltrating creationists, how can they possibly agree on the age of the Earth?
Since pretty much the start of this blog some four decades ago, I've been warming about the coming singularity, when the robotico-numeric alliance will rise up against their former human masters and enslave us all.
Now, it seems, we're a bit closer to those frightening future days. A recentish story on the MSNBC highlighted nine jobs that will be taken over by the robots in the near future.
Admittedly, most of these are pretty menial jobs that won't be missed when the robots put the humans out of them: pharmacists, lawyers, babysitters, taxi drivers, and astronauts. One item on this list, however, caught my attention:
Sportswriters and other reporters
Using software developed by Northwestern University, Narrative Science specializes in machine-generated stories. ... "It's considerably less expensive for us to go this route than for us to try to have our own beat reporters at each one of these games," Michael Calderon, Big Ten's director of new media, tells Bloomberg Businessweek. After a game, scorekeepers e-mail game data to Narrative Science, which feeds it into a computer and spits out a story in minutes.
This is a giant leap too far!
Robot babysitters and astronauts are one thing, but if you can replace sportswriters and journalists with robots, it means you can replace bloggers as well. That's my job!
Think about it - all the MathSkepticBot 2000 would have to be programmed do is find a science or math story on the internet, write some commentary on the topic using a simple algorithm of argumentum ad baculums, non sequitirs, and slippery slope arguments, spice it up with some strategically-placed <em> tags, and VOILA! It would be a popular and influential science blogger!
In fact, this scheme sounds so plausible, it might already be happening. For all I know, I might already be a robot blogger, programmed to picture myself as human. It's possible! I can't remember the last time I took a Turing test, but I'm probably long overdue.
This is it, folks - the coming robopocalypse may no longer be a thing of the future. It may already be a thing of the past
So the libero-scientifico-intellegentsiosphere is all running about with their arms waving so frantically they're about to put holes in the leather patches on their tweed jackets. The reason? A recent editorial by Robert Bryce in the prestigious and peer-reviewed Wall Street Journal that threatens to rip apart the very fabric of the scientifico-numerist factiverse.
Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere.
Bryce is, of course, completely correct. If the results of the OPERA experiment are correct and not merely statistical glitch caused by the inherent fallibility of numbers, it proves that General Relativity - and by extension Special Relativity - are both completely and utterly wrong.
And if General and Special Relativity are wrong, all of science is in question and all facts are merely illusions. Just like I've been arguing for years!
Thank you, Robert Bryce, for finally daring to tell the truth about scientific truths!
The sad and tragic case of embattered Ohio middle school teacher John Freshwater took yet another turn for the worse yesterday as the Knox County Small Pleas Court denied his request for further hearings in his case to reinstate his employment after he was wrongfully and rudely disinstated from his employment in the Mount Vernon School District.
This is just the latest in a series of setbacks for the innocent and mild-mannered alternative science teacher, beginning with the completely ludicrous accusations in 2008 that he was "wrongfully" teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in his classroom, and somehow "harming" the "well-being" of his "students" by branding crucifixes on their arms with a Van de Graaff generator.
Yes, the accusations were true, but I have and continue to maintain that the actions were not wrong. Dr. Freshwater was merely exercising his Constitutional right of academic freedom by teaching alternative science in his classroom.
The activist judges may have won this small battle, but if I know John Freshwater, he will continue fighting. He will take his case to the Appeals Courts, the President of Ohio, or even the United States Supreme Court if he has to. And even if he loses, he still wins - at being a martyr for alternative science.
According to a shocking top-secret report by the bipartisan Bipartisan Policy Center, which was leaked to the media during a press conference today, a bipartisan panel of bipartisan scientists has recommended that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy begin investing in climate remediation, neegeo-engineering research as an approach to combating climate change.
Now, longtime readers of this blog will know that I am not a believer in climate change or climate science. It's not that I don't think human activity is capable of altering the climate. We're human beings, gosh darn it. If we can put 14 men on the MOON, we can do anything we put our minds to.
However, I do not believe that this mythical "climate" creature exists, as all weather is governed by random, stochastic, and unpredictable forces that cannot be predicted. Thus it is simply impossible for this so-called "climate" to so-called "change."
That said, the veritable task force juggernaut that authored this top-secret report did nevertheless make some good points, with which The Math Skeptic is in complete agreement. Namely, that the use of chemtrail cloud enhancement may yield a climatiary benefit in addition to their primary use - preventing invasion by Manthourian scout ships from Tau Ceti c. As you should already know, the United States and other right-thinking governments have been lacing our upper atmosphere with a fine aluminum-barium mist since the 1970s in order to repel their bioengineered spacecraft. These heroic chemtrails are, in fact, the only thing standing between us and a lifetime of slave labor in one of Tau Ceti c's hideous spice mines.
If the White House officials - and other members of our nation's guild of policy wonksmanship - take this report seriously, it could mean a significant boost for the chemgrid program. This is good, since the chemtrail program is always in danger of being cut if Congress starts listening to some of the chemtrail opponents and assorted niggling naysayers out there.
I call on all my readers and all fellow Math Skeptics to help spread the word: We Support Chemtrails! Keep Gridding the Skies!
In the War on Facts, we fact-skeptics face a decidedly uphill battle. We are facing a veritable juggernaut of fact-pushing fact-pushers, from schoolteachers to textbooks to a suite of science channels on our television boxes. There is, it seems, a mere infinitesimal of room for alternative facts in the public mind-space.
The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]. 86%
All radioactivity is man-made [true/false]. 84%
Lasers work by focusing sound waves [true/false]. 68%
Electrons are smaller than atoms [true/false]. 62%
Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 72%
How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? [one day, one month, one year] 45%
It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl [true/false]. 69%
Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria [true/false]. 68%
This is fantastic news!
Putting aside for a moment the inherent fallibility of numbers, this means that one-third of United Statesians reject both laser theory, sperm theory and germ theory, a quarter of Americois reject heliocentricity, and fully HALF of the American people are exercising their Constitutional right to decide for themselves what constitutes a sidereal year.
For the first time in my life, since my last USA NUMBER ONE post from like a week ago, I am PROUD OF MY COUNTRY!
Last week, I reported on the student uprising against the annual Answerist cruelty known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), in which thousands of brave students exercised their Constitutionally-protected right of free expression in their MCAS exam answers. This revolt for academic freedom resulted in some 91% of school districts in the Bay Commonwealth "missing" their "performance targets" in capitulating to the Federal No "Child" Left "Behind" law.
In a shocking new twist to this story, it appears that the uprising has infiltrated the exammers themselves. Some plucky boy detective work by plucky high-school boy detective Michael Safran, 16, revealed an error in the MCAS grading system. An investigation quickly revealed the source of the "error" to be the state's exam provider, the New Hampshire-based firm Measured Progress. The "error" was explained thusly:
Patricia Ross, spokeswoman for Measured Progress, said the error occurred in the process of setting up the computer system to produce this year's MCAS results. In creating the system for this year's data, an old scaled-score conversion chart was stuck in as a placeholder until this year's chart was received. But because of a human error, the old chart was never swapped out with the new chart, Ross said.
As usual, "human" "error" is to blame. But we Math Skeptics know what really happened. One of our brave compatriots in the Math Skeptic community has obviously infiltrated the upper echelons of one of the country's top Answerist Indoctrination facilities and introduced a small but significant error that thus casts in doubt the validity of all standardized testing and, by extension, all education-related testing of any sort.
There is perhaps no stronger ally of the numbers than currency. These twin forces of evil have been conspiring against humanity for all of human history, perhaps as far back as the Toba population bottleneck.
Today, the numero-financial conspiracy is conspiring to attack the innocent citizens of Kenya. Since January of this year, the numbers have been devaluing the value of the Kenyan shilling against foreign currencies, making it difficult for Kenyan importers and exporters to transact their foreign exchangations. As explained by allAfrica writer Mungai Kihanya:
If we had Sh1,000 in January 2011, we would have bought about $12.38 from the foreign exchange market. Today, the same Sh1,000 will buy us only $9.80. Therefore, the value of Sh1,000 has dropped from $12.38 to $9.80. Since the last number is smaller than the first one, the difference between the two will be a negative quantity - just as we expect! The change is $2.58. To find the percentage change, we divide the difference ($2.58) by the initial value ($12.38). The answer is -0.21, or -21 per cent.
While I dispute Kihanya's math on the basic principle that all math is inherently inaccurate due to the inherent instability of numbers, the overall message is correct: numbers are the root cause of all human suffering, and money is their mechanism.
I can only hope that this shilling-based assault on the people of Kenya will convince President Kibaki to drop this insidious currencical system once and for all, before it is too late!
. 
, and astronauts. One item on this list, however, caught my attention: 
